geography of scars

I recently picked up Woman Hollering Creek (1991) by Sandra Cisneros, thanks to two of the first queer figures in my life. The women in Cisneros’ stories navigate coming to understand themselves outside of social molds, and they love so fucking hard through it all, and yet their relationships often end poorly. How exhausting, to invent one’s own self and one’s own love. It is imperfect, surely contradicting, and the women in Cisnero’s stories are ostracized and abandoned by their communities in the process. But nonetheless a beautiful testament to their hope for something more.

Here’s an excerpt from Woman Hollering Creek, a poem titled “Bread”: 

“We ripped big chunks with our hands and ate. The car a pearl blue like my heart that afternoon. Smell of warm bread, bread in both fists, a tango on the tape player loud, loud, loud, because me and him, we're the only ones who can stand it like that, like if the bandoneón, violin, piano, guitar, bass, were inside us, like when he wasn't married, like before his kids, like if all the pain hadn't passed between us. 

Driving down streets with buildings that remind him, he says, how charming this city is. And me remembering when I was little, a cousin's baby who died from swallowing rat poison in a building like these.

That's just how it is. And that's how we drove. With all this new city memories and all my oId. Him kissing me between big bites of bread.”

Professor Mary Pat Brady explains how this poem is an example of the way which Cisneros navigates a “geography of scars,” as she refuses to surrender her memory of a dangerous space to a simple, romantic space that erases the consequences of racialized and gendered capitalist decay. But what strikes me is that even as Cisneros makes a critical critique of our urban contexts, in the midst of her violent memories where it is easy to get lost in the dark, she is trying to love (well… who knows if she would describe this scene as full of love/loving, but I’m a romantic…). I think Cisneros is inventing a nuanced, complex, complicated love that makes sense for her. A love that persists, in spite of. 

I wonder what that does to our bodies and our minds… having to constantly be reminded of the violence in the spaces we inhabit, but choosing to find those nooks and crevices where we can kiss, eat, find joy, laugh, listen to music, enjoy. Perhaps even eat bread in a passionate, careless, orderless way. Is it even really a choice? Perhaps it is human nature to invent love and try to feel/find love in the midst of physical and structural violence. I wonder what it would be like to consider our own skin and bones as a complicated geography of scars, underdeveloped, and invent our own love within our skin folds, muscles, and bones regardless of how beat we may be. bell hooks writes, “What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hand” (All About Love: New Visions, 1999). 

Here’s to a new year. And here’s a love letter to all who choose to be optimists, lovers, full of hope, and romantics in spite of decay, violence, memories. This is a love letter to those of us who were too young to understand, who are now trying to crawl out of holes, who were discarded by loved ones, who felt too alone, who needed a hug.

Geography of Scars
andrés oyaga
jan. 2024

You trace your fingers across these scars, 
memories preserved. 
My skin and heart hold markings from a terrain not of my own choosing or creation. 
	A home full of fear filled with scripture of condemnation
                the epigenetics of addiction from an ancestor in so much pain
	love that is conditional on my ability to please 
                reminders of your violence, or ghosts in the walls
	heaven based on an ancient shame
		Scars, scars, scars.
You peel of my flesh and look at it. 
A guttural reaction to my memories. 
You close the door and turn away, 
and I am left alone.
We all romanticize looking at the fear in someone else's face
and crossing it like a bridge, getting closer to the other's essence. 
But it is easier said than practiced, like a ritual. 
And I am left alone.

Look at my world and don’t run away, 
just exist in it.
I want to look at your world, too. 
No need to take up space, 
just admire you in all of your mess, too.
This is what we all crave. 
A moment of sonder, 
and I can only describe it as complete tenderness. 

Like a child, I will dare you: 
linger in my flesh, bone, blood, big soul, 
find the wonder I once had, 
and you’ll see it is not so dark.
          That year ended with my body washed in the Pacific. 
          That month I learned to make tortillas from scratch. 
          That week was hell but I met a mighty Northern Red Oak. 
          That day was long but I held you tight before flying back home.
          That hour we kept each other warm in the rain.
          That minute I grew an inch. 
          That second we saw poppies and tulips. 

I trace my fingers across these old scars, this time in sunlight. 
Scars cannot not keep track of all my memories. Many are hidden from your view. 
I will give these scars a bigger purpose. 
How this flesh of mine can become heavenly love again. 
An unconditional love of my invention, 
out of thin air. 
A love that this world cannot comprehend is hiding in my wrinkles.
I cannot abandon this skin.